Hughes Norton was the man behind Tiger Woods’ meteoric rise. He first met the 5-foot-5, 100-pound Woods when he was just 13 years old. She was his agent when Woods won the Masters at age 21 in 1997. He orchestrated his multimillion-dollar deals with Nike and Titleist in 1996. And his reward? Unemployment.
Before Greg Norman was a PGA Tour pariah and Woods was a 15-time major winner and launched another comeback, Norton was the golf world’s super agent representing them both.
But his greatest success over a career at IMG that spanned two and a half decades was the discovery of the greatest game of all time. A success that was taken away from him just as quickly.
Norton is the architect behind Woods’ billions. He orchestrated Woods’ first contract with Nike for five years and $40 million guaranteed and a $20 million contract with Titleist. However, despite providing him with generational wealth, just two years into the deals, an “emotionless” Woods turned around and let Norton go.
In ‘Rainmaker: Super Agent Hughes Norton and the Explosion of Golf for Money from Tiger to LIV and Beyond‘, co-written with former Golf magazine editor George Peper, Norton takes readers behind the curtain of the high-stakes world of sports management.
Hughes Norton was golf’s super agent, representing Tiger Woods and Greg Norman.
The Harvard Business School alumnus was the architect behind Woods’ meteoric rise to fame.
In his book, he takes readers behind the curtain of the world of sports management.
Ahead of the release of his tell-all book, ‘Rainmaker,’ which hit shelves on March 26 in the United States, Norton spoke with sport mail about understanding his meteoric rise and abrupt fall.
“It was betrayal with a capital B,” Norton admits while discussing his firing by Woods. ‘On a professional level, because I thought I had more than done my job. And on a personal level, because it was a great rejection of a relationship that we had built together for 10 years.”
In ‘Rainmaker’, a must-read for all golf fans, Norton recalls the day in September 1998 when an ’emotionless’ Woods stood before him with ‘zombie’ eyes and told him it was all over, before giving up. turn around and walk. far. She hasn’t heard from him since.
But the Harvard Business School alum insists that he’s not the only recipient of Woods’ deadpan outings. He claims there is never a hint of emotion in Woods’ farewells.
“The consolation I can find, which doesn’t provide much, is this: He was an equal-opportunity zombie with relationships, his swing coaches, his lawyer, the guy who negotiated the IMG representation deal, with caddies,” he says. . ‘When it’s over, it’s over.
‘It’s the way he ends relationships with everyone. Whether it’s his girlfriends or his former golf coaches. It’s ironic, really. In some ways, he’s very good at confrontation on the golf course. If he is playing with you, he will break your brains out every time. But when it comes to dealing with things like me and other people in his life, he has no social skills. Actually, it’s infuriating.
The loss of Woods also resulted in him losing his job at IMG, just 60 days later, which Norton believes was a direct consequence of his biggest talent leaving him.
Remembering what many would consider some of the lowest moments of their lives has been a process that has actually been cathartic, Norton insists, comparing writing ‘Rainmaker’ to sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch.
In Rainmaker, Norton remembers the day in 1998 when an “emotionless” Woods told him it was over.
Norton orchestrated Woods’ deal with Nike, a partnership that lasted 27 years until earlier this year.
Norton is pictured with his IMG colleague James Erskine during the 1978 Masters Tournament.
And, after revisiting the saga once again, Norton admits that he never really got closure, but he can rest easy knowing that even now he has no regrets about how he orchestrated Woods’ career.
From hiring Earl Woods as a junior scout for two years to sealing deals with Nike and Titleist and limiting Woods’ obnoxious media appearances, Norton maintains he did everything an agent should.
“I did the best I could, the best we could at IMG, to protect him from this storm of celebrity,” he says. ‘Tigermania emerged and it was total madness. And that drove him crazy. But we tried to keep the media stuff to a minimum as best we could and then set him up financially from day one with generational wealth. I thought I had done everything an agent should have done and more.
And dealing with Tigermania seems to have been no easy task.
Norton reveals that during the first six months of Woods’ meteoric rise to fame, IMG received more than 1,500 media requests. Something that naturally earned the company many enemies, as it “molded” them when they couldn’t deliver even 10 percent.
He adds that running Tigermania is like nothing he’s ever seen before. Woods was as big as Elvis Presley or The Beatles and certainly bigger than a great white shark.
“Greg (Norman) was a global icon,” Norton says of another of his former clients. ‘Tiger didn’t even have the global part yet. He was simply a rising American star.
“Greg, as popular as he was around the world and having his fair share of immediate lawsuits, wasn’t even in the same neighborhood.”
Norton reveals in Rainmaker that IMG hired Earl Woods as a junior talent scout for two years
Norton was at Augusta with the Woods family when Tiger, 21, won his first Masters.
Norman, whom Norton describes as a “classic narcissist” in his gripping chapters on the now CEO of LIV Golf, finally parted ways with IMG in December 1993.
The “ultra-aggressive” Norman had an “overwhelming need to be visible and relevant,” says Norton in his incredibly insightful analysis of the Australian’s character in Rainmaker, and he was instantly cool with the young Tiger Woods when he burst onto the scene. Something that was equally reciprocated by Woods.
But by the time Woods was officially on his roster after turning pro in 1996, Norman had already left Norton and branched out on his own.
It was a betrayal that still hurt but didn’t come close to the zombie apocalypse that Woods would bring five years later.
“After 11 years together, he wanted to strike out on his own and I understood that a little bit better than Tiger, because historically superstars have gone off on their own after a period of time,” Norton says of Norman. ‘They just do it, no matter what management agency they are with.
‘They think, you know what, everything before this has been good, everything is fine. No hard feelings. “I really want to do it myself.” So that’s Greg’s situation.
‘He certainly has the right to that. Did I feel disappointed and devastated when he left? Yes, because we were very good friends and I didn’t expect it. But the Tiger’s situation was much more difficult and more disturbing.
Norton claims Greg Norman instantly cooled off on Woods when he burst onto the scene
But when Norman left IMG, he took with him much more than his global popularity and brand deals. He also took the blueprint for the weapon that would send the golf world into civil war.
Norman has sold himself as the revolutionary behind LIV Golf, but one of Rainmaker’s biggest revelations is that the idea wasn’t even his.
Almost every page of Rainmaker divulges a fascinating gem of insight into the secrets of the world of golf, and among many, Norton drops the explosive claim that he had long been whispering IMG founder Mark McCormack’s grand proposal for a global tour, one that had already featured Arnold Palmer years before.
“Mark McCormack was a visionary and he was way ahead of his time, leaps and bounds ahead of everyone. And that’s a classic example,” he says.
‘It’s really one of the biggest revelations in the book. LIV, which Greg has claimed as his own genius idea for a world tour, was actually dreamed up 30 years before Greg submitted it as his own by this incredibly brilliant at-the-time manager of Arnold Palmer.
‘Greg left IMG and fired me in early ’94. It wasn’t long before I pitched this world tour idea in the fall of that year.
LIV Golf CEO Norman took over IMG’s getaway plan when he left in 1994
Norton with Mark McCormack, founder and president of International Management Group
Fast forward 30 years and the Shark finally saw “his” vision come true. LIV Golf, funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, embarked on its third season earlier this year after attracting some of the game’s biggest names, including Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, with deals lucrative.
Hughes insists he’s watching the soap opera of LIV-PGA Tour negotiations from afar these days, but he knows exactly how he would advise his clients if he were still in the game.
“It’s pretty simple,” he says when asked how he would navigate the murky waters of the controversial escapade. “It’s such a ridiculous and frankly overvalued amount of money that it almost stops the conversation right there.”
‘You can talk about loyalty to the PGA or you can talk about violating the traditions of the great sport of golf, but when someone offers you multigenerational wealth? The reaction would be A) How can I reject that? And the answer is that you can’t. YB) Where do I sign? I couldn’t in good conscience say no.
Rainmaker: Super Agent Hughes Norton and the Explosion of Golf for Money from Tiger to LIV and Beyond is available everywhere in the US starting March 26.